Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures

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Monthly Archives: May 2015

When we were thinking about wrapping up our two years of travel it seemed like a good idea to have a round up of our favourite photos. To speed up the process we decided to each go through the photos that we took and compile our own selections. It hadn’t really occurred to me how long it would take to just physically look through the 42,485 photos that I had saved, never mind decide which 50 or so were the best. It was a lot of fun though and we found ourselves frequently stopping to share a photo and ask “remember this?”

I’d say that the most photogenic countries we visited were Mongolia for stunning landscapes, Bangladesh for its friendly people, Japan for its culture, and Uzbekistan for a mix of buildings and people as well as phenomenal weather (a bit of sunshine can make the difference between an OK photo and a good one).

It quickly became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to whittle my favourites down to 50, so here is the first of three long instalments…

The reconstructed House of the Blackheads on our first evening in Riga, Latvia

A display of dried fish in Riga’s amazing covered market

Pickled vegetables are a big part of the food culture in the Baltics and Russia and we got quite a taste for them. This stall is in Riga’s market

Andrew having the first of many street-side haircuts, this one was in Hanoi

There are far more varieties of noodles than I ever dreamed of for sale in Vietnam

Our friend Jo visited us for the first time in Vietnam. I was trying to brighten this photo which we took at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and really liked the effect I got by changing it to black and white

As we mentioned before we set off in our packing dry-run and what do you pack for a two year trip posts, there’s plenty written about what to take on this kind of extended world travel and why to take it. Once you’ve read your fill of those posts and made your kit decisions, here’s a post on how to pack that kit for epic adventures!

Put everything in separate carrier bags – this is to make the contents waterproof. They want to be no more than ¾ full so the top of the carrier bag can be rolled or folded over. If it’s electrical: cables, batteries, camera memory cards, or made of paper (books, leaflets or entrance tickets) use two – they’re light and take up no extra space.

Put the heavier stuff at the bottom – this will make it easier to lift, easier to carry, and its better for the spine too.

Have a place for everything – it might take a few un-packs and re-packs starting out, but 3 months in we had our systems down to a fine art. The benefits are not just being able to quickly find stuff when we needed it, but we knew we had everything before we left because we got used to the order everything had to be packed in!

Side Pockets: More space for handy stuff! We’d typically put things like mugs, forks and spoons, suncream and mosquito repellant and padlock and chain-lock to deter opportunist thieves in the side pockets.

Starting at the bottom, here’s how we’d pack an empty rucksack..Bottom: Heavy, bulky stuff at the bottom and towards the back (i.e. closest to the spine when it’s worn): Spare shoes, flip-flops, clothes in separate bags. I bought dry sacks, but carrier bags will do just fine. One bag for underwear, one for trousers, bottoms and swimwear, another for t-shirts and tops, and don’t forget a bag or two for dirty clothes or laundry – I try to find a colourful bag for laundry so it’s easy to spot.Middle: This is the area hardest to reach as most rucksacks have openings at top and bottom. Here we put things we think we won’t need while we’re moving between places, such as souvenirs or books we’re not currently reading. This is also the place for toiletries. It’s worth having a wash bag (yes, even for the guys!) as it’s so much easier to carry toothbrushes, toothpaste, shower gel, shaving gear and deodorant to shared shower rooms down the hall from hostel rooms if it’s all in one bag. I took a medium-sized LifeVenture washbag which was perfect, but a carrier bag worked just as well on occasion.Top: Anything we might need first when we arrive at our destination: Charging cables, any food provisions we had left over such as bags of pasta, tea & coffee, stock cubes and seasonings, sweeties, etc.

Side note.. on the pros and cons of rucksack liners:
Julie used a big waterproof rucksack liner, and on the whole would have preferred separate smaller bags for the single reason that invariably the thing you need is at the bottom which means unpacking your entire bag. That said, on the one occasion of our trip where our bags were completely soaked, everything of Julie’s stayed dry and our guidebook, which was in my rucksack but not in a plastic bag, took 4 days to dry out properly!

Given our experiences, we’d avoid rucksack liners in favour of carrier bags and smaller dry sacks because of the convenience. It’s a pain having to completely unpack when in dorms or we’re only staying somewhere for a few nights.

Day sack: On the move..

1 year in. 17th March 2014, Joypurhat, Bangladesh – waiting for a bus to Paharpur (photo credit: Roman, a very kind student we met on the train)

When we were moving we’d have a quick think about what we were likely to need and pack that in our smaller rucksack, such as our sleeping bag liners, toothbrush and toothpaste and earplugs if we were on an overnight train. We’d always keep the most important things in our smaller day sacks as they’re much easier to keep with us or close by, and they’re easier to secure with a padlock.

Day sack: Out and about..

The full french experience – carrying a fresh baguette through the markets of Dijon, France

If we were staying in shared accommodation we’d put all of the important stuff in Julie’s larger day-sack and padlock it, then put it in a locker or leave it with the reception in their luggage room. My smaller day sack was perfect for carrying the stuff we needed while we were out sightseeing or heading to the markets.

Inquisitor: “Great, so how long are you here in [insert city / country]?”

Julie or I: “about a week/month.. we’re on a pretty long trip”

Inquisitor: “really? how long?”

Julie or I: “about two years”

Inquisitor:

Inquisitor: ..

Inquisitor: “Wow!”

Q: What’s your favourite country?

This is usually the first one and a really difficult question to answer because it’s so hard to choose! Our answer through Mongolia and most of China was Russia as our experiences were still fresh, but 19½ months and 25 countries later we now reply with “different countries for different reasons“..

Russia is invariably the first country we’ll mention. It was so different to our expectations and the stereotypical western portrayal – the people are so warm and welcoming and everyone’s heard of the Trans Siberian Railway!

Q: Which country did you like the least?

The first time we were asked this we really had to think hard about it, and even then we didn’t really come up with an answer – everywhere we’ve visited has had so many overwhelmingly positive traits that the odd negative things hardly register. As we found we were asked this question more frequently, we thought about it some more and came up with 2 for pretty much the same reason.. first was Singapore – we were only there for a week with the intention of recovering from the beautiful sensory overload that was Bangladesh, and we couldn’t have picked a more contrasting country to follow. Singapore was sterile, sensible, and spotless to our eyes. We enjoyed our time there, but it just doesn’t stack up against the other countries on our list for the kind of adventurous backpacking travel we love.
The second is on Andrew’s list for its initial impression having just arrived from Japan.. and it’s South Korea – this time the perfection of the Japanese, well, everything, had raised my expectations and South Korea was a little disappointing. But, it was a slow burner and the combination of Korean hospitality, history, culture and food won me over about a week or so into our month there. Would I go back? In a heartbeat!

Q: How big are your bags / how much stuff are you carrying?

We read a lot of other travellers’ experience and advice about what to take and how much to take, and the oft-quoted wisdom that came up again and again was this:

“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” – Susan Heller, NYT

And it’s sage advice. We didn’t quite adhere to Heller’s suggestion, and between us we carried 2 big rucksacks (65ltr, 65-75ltr), 2 smaller day sacks (35ltr, 12ltr) and Julie had a small handbag. We wrote about the kit we set off with, and I also did a quick review after a year or so, but in hindsight we could have travelled lighter!

Q: Haven’t you killed each other yet?!

We’re both pretty easy going (“yeah, right!” – Julie), but being in each other’s pockets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for two years meant we were bound to rub each other up the wrong way now and then. And they’ve been the things most couples usually argue about, like money; deciding between us which activities, museums and side trips we really wanted to do; how often we wanted to eat out; and just generally which countries to visit, which sights to see, and which routes to take through those countries. In hindsight we think we’ve disagreed very little during the trip and one of the main reasons for leaving our often more-than-full-time jobs to travel in the first place was so we could spend more time together :o)

Q: Which places that you’ve visited would you like to live in?

We like this question, and our friends half expected to receive a postcard from some far-flung place saying that we’d found paradise, bought a beach-house and if they wanted to see us again they’d have to jump on an aeroplane! It’s also a question we’d often ask ourselves of cities and countries as we walked around – “would we live here?” – and, of all the wonderful places we’ve experienced, a few stand out as having our perfect combination of culture (history, museums, theatres, street life and architecture), weather, and of course, food! In trip order, our ideal settling cities are:

St Petersburg, Russia – a relaxed version of Moscow, with great museums, and a European influence of varied cuisines and fresh produce

Bern, Switzerland – now that we’ve found Julie’s winter sport, we can add Switzerland to our list! Cheese? Wine? Stunning mountain hiking in the summer? And we’d see more of our long-time friends Heidi & Olivier.. Yes please!

Amsterdam, Netherlands – we loved the architecture, the Dutch trading history which influenced the diversity of the food, the liberal, pragmatic, tolerant attitude towards everything, the museums, the Belgian-like beers and the cycling everywhere!

Q: Have you ever had anything stolen, or had anything bad happen to you on the road?

Of course! Even though we were pretty seasoned travellers before we embarked on this two year trip, we were still caught out by professional scammers or the odd con-artist now and then, and of course stuff goes missing and things don’t always go according to plan. Our previous experience has been that even though they’re unpleasant at the time, the bad circumstances often make the best stories! Here are a few mishaps and mis-steps from our trip..

Missing our flight to Bangladesh – We booked our flight, turned up at the airport in Kuala Lumpur with a little over 2 hours before our original scheduled departure of 7pm to find that the Bangladeshi airline we’d booked with had rescheduled the flight to 6am that morning, without telling us! – no notification, no email, nothing. Apparently it’s a regular trick that particular airline pull, as we were told by the girl at the desk of the only other airline running a flight out of KL to Dhaka that night, which fortunately for us still had seats available!

Scammed by a money changer in Uzbekistan – The exchange rate from US Dollar to Uzbek Som was ridiculous. We changed all of our money on the black market which meant standing in public counting fistfuls of money. To their credit, we were never rushed at all by any of the money changers when we insisted on double-counting each pre-bundled house-brick of notes. We’d gotten pretty adept at counting quickly and at our last money change in Fergana I had also gotten a little complacent with the changers as I handed a counted bundle back to the guy to hold and he must have creamed a little from it while we counted the last bundles. Oh well!

Stolen? Or just misplaced? – From the kit we took, we only lost or had stolen Julie’s penknife and a necklace, my beat up metal Sigg water bottle, and a pair of socks with “Friday” written on them that didn’t come back from the hotel laundry!

Q: What was the hardest or most challenging country to visit?

There were a few for different reasons:

Mongolia was difficult for the kind of independent travel we like to do because the people are nomadic which means there’s little infrastructure outside of Ulaanbaatar because there simply isn’t the demand for it. While there are busses to the centre of every aimag or province to and from the capital Ulaanbaatar, and local busses from each of those to the other towns in each aimag, Mongolia is still very difficult to navigate and travel independently of organised tours or private hire drivers. That said, we managed a couple of short trips from Ulaanbataar to Kharkhorin and Zuunmod under our own steam, even hitching a ride on a bus full of French pensioners to get to a campsite!

Bangladesh was easier to visit from a planning and getting around point of view, but we missed a few creature comforts like clean running water, non-smelly toilets and pavements! Despite these, or more likely because of them, we absolutely loved it.

Finally, China was challenging for communication. Our dear friends Isaac and Rebecca from Beijing did their very best to teach us some Mandarin as we bounced along the Mongolian steppe, but outside the capitals we found the Chinese to be very shy about speaking English when we’d try to ask for directions in patchy Chinese – so much so that even if they could they’d often prefer to shake their heads and duck away rather than try. That difference in culture is the reason to travel, but it makes asking for directions tricky! Also, the pronunciation is hard – we tried to buy train tickets at the English counter for Zhangjiajie and they had no idea what we were saying! (We tried to say it as we would read it in English, whereas it’s actually pronounced “Djang-Jar-Jay”!).

Q: Did you ever get homesick?

Yes and often. Missing family events and gatherings was hard, such as weddings, Christmas, and the birth of our niece Emma, and we both lost loved ones while we were away – those were some of the emotionally toughest times of the trip because we wanted to be home to share the comfort and the grief. We imagined the conversation with our dearly departed when we pondered the question “should we go back for the funeral?” only to hear them in our heads tell us in no uncertain terms to keep following our dreams.

Q: What’s the most exotic thing you’ve eaten?

We like to think we’re pretty adventurous eaters, and I don’t think we passed up the opportunity to try anything we saw or were offered on our trip. The most exotic things we tried would be silkworm larvae and crickets in Matsumoto, Japan, pig’s trotters in Chengdu, China, insect essence from a female water beetle used to flavour a dip for a steamed pancake wrap in Hanoi, Vietnam, and we’d read about a local speciality which we tried to ask for in Korean, but ended up with a bowl of boiled sheep’s intestines instead in Suwon, South Korea. I must confess that I tried the intestines but I left most of them and drank the broth.

Q: Did you get tired of living out of a suitcase?

Q: When are you going to write a book?

Even before we set off we were asked if we’d write a book! Let’s just say that while it’s not in our immediate plans, we haven’t ruled it out either. One question we’d have about writing a book is this: what would we put in it? We’ve already written about our travels here on this blog! (Answers on a postcard, or in the comments please!)

Q: Where are you going next?

We think we’re going to need another two years to catch up with our family and friends up and down the UK! In our first two weeks we’ve already been to London, York and Gateshead, and next week we’re off to Nottingham! Travel-wise, we’ve come back with a list just as long as when we left, from talking to other travellers.. but right now we’re enjoying hearing all of the news we missed from our loved ones ;o)

As we’ve travelled through Asia and Europe for two years, we’ve learnt a lot. I think that some of it can probably be called general life lessons whereas other things are more pertinent to travelling. Here they are, a mix of our thoughts and travel tips…

Ready to board our first train at Newcastle Station, excited about what the next two years would bring

Having a guidebook to the country you’re visiting is really helpful. Of course all of the information is available online somewhere, but to get an overview of a place and its layout the guidebook is a good shortcut. We’ve also found that we prefer a paper guidebook rather than the ebook version as it’s easier to flip between maps and attraction information. Accommodation and restaurants are the exception, for the former we look online (TripAdvisor or the reviews on booking sites), for places to eat we just follow our noses!Without our Lonely Planet guide we might never have found out about the open air Pedvale Sculpture Park in Sabile, Latvia

Walking a city is the best way to get your bearings and get a feel for distances between landmarks as well as being a good way to spot places to eat or drink.Getting an overview of Tallinn’s old town from the city walls

We thought giving up our jobs to go travelling for two years was pretty adventurous but we were constantly meeting people far more adventurous than us, from the German vet who arrived in Mongolia, bought a horse and just set off, to the Japanese man who after travelling for a while bought himself a bike in Bishkek, Krgyzstan to continue his journey to Scotland by pedal power.We’re nowhere near adventurous (crazy?) enough to go canoeing in the icy sea like this group that we saw at Suomenlinna in Helsinki

It’s quite possible to have an hour long “conversation” with someone even if you don’t have a shared language. Tourist charades, odd words, photos and even drawing pictures help a lot. If a random stranger tries to strike up a conversation with you in a language you don’t understand, the most likely correct answer to their first question is England (or whatever your country of origin might be). It’s really helpful to learn it in the local lingo – in Russian it’s Anglia.Andrew with Vasily on the train from Krasnoyarsk to Severobaikalsk. Despite only having about ten common words in a mixture of English, Russian and German they found out quite a bit about each other.

Carry a ziploc bag of toilet roll in your daypack. You might carry it for ages without ever needing it but when you do you’ll be glad.Mongolian toilets are not the most luxurious that we’ve encountered during the two years but they do have the best views

It’s pretty easy to find familiar brand names everywhere you go – Coca Cola is omnipresent, and Starbucks and McDonald’s almost so. I was surprised how easy it was to find our usual brands of toiletries – Pantene shampoos, Sure deodrant, Colgate toothpaste, etc. Of course the packaging is in a different language but I found the familiar styling to be reassuring. The only place we struggled was in Japan where anti-perspirant seemingly doesn’t exist.Sure it’s in Chinese, but you know that it’s Sprite don’t you?

It’s surprisingly easy not to buy stuff (clothes, souvenirs, “wow that’s cool” things) when you know you’ll have to carry them for months and months. It’s a bit like being on a diet, less willpower is required for a blanket ‘no’ than for limiting your intake. It’ll be strange to readjust to buying things again but we’ve both come to appreciate how little “stuff” we actually need.I was very tempted at the jade market in Hong Kong, but managed to resist the urge and left with only a photo

Smile at people. The response you get will definitely vary according to cultural differences but it will always be positive.Vietnamese street food vendor, we got some of the broadest return smiles here.

Waterproof the contents of your bag, we learnt this the hard way on a boat trip in Cambodia. Although a lot of our stuff was in plastic bags or didn’t suffer from getting wet we lost a couple of books and about half of our med kit.Our boat from Battambang to Siem Riep in Cambodia before the rain clouds rolled in

We’re pretty relaxed about where and what we eat believing that a large part of the joy of the trip comes from the food. We’ll eat street food, ice and salad as long as we follow the rules – are locals eating there, is there a fast turnover of food, is it freshly cooked.A vast array of satay skewers to choose from at a street stall in Kuala Lumpur

People are essentially the same all over the world. Their priorities are just like yours – they love their family, they want to earn a living, and they’re curious about why foreigners are in their neighbourhood.That said, Bangladeshis definitely win the prize for most curious nation!

With that in mind, there’s no need to expect that everyone you meet wants to mug you. Sure you need to be aware of your surroundings and take sensible precautions (like padlocking your valuables inside a bag when you’re out of your hotel room) but there’s no need to be obsessive, for example we don’t wear money belts.

I used to be surprised by how many people chose their own bed as their luxury on the radio programme Desert Island Discs. That was before we slept in 199 over the course of two years and realised how crucial a comfortable bed and especially pillows can be in getting a decent night’s sleep and not waking up as twisted as a windswept tree.The blissfully comfortable bed that we found in our Airbnb room in Singapore, especially good after some uncomfortable nights in Bangladesh [photo credit: our host Diana, via Airbnb]

I love the adrenaline rush that I get on the first day in a new country – the assault on the senses of what is different, listening to the rhythms of a new language and trying to figure out how things work.One of our first meals in Busan, South Korea; completely different to anything we’d had before, especially all those kimchi side dishes

Flights account for huge chunks of budget and we’ve enjoyed travelling overland wherever possible. Taking overnight trains is a great experience and saves on the price of a hotel while getting you from A to B.Settling in on a sleeper train in China

Practice your mental arithmetic. Finding a simple way of converting to your home currency prevents nasty surprises later when working out how much something cost.
The awards for most ridiculous currency: Vietnam had the most obscence exchange rate with £1 = 33,000 dong, but for sheer unusability the Uzbekistan som with £1 = 5000 som and the most common banknote at 1000 som, meant that we had to pay for everything with notes worth 20p and needed to carry a hefty bundle to cover the day’s expenses.Andrew with the equivalent of $100 (~£60) in Uzbek som!

A sarong is a surprisingly versatile piece of kit. Mine has only rarely been used as a sarong but it has served time as a scarf, pillow, blanket, seat cover, headscarf, hot water bottle cover…Wearing the sarong as a headscarf while visiting the Blue Mosque in Istanbul

Write a blog or keep a journal. We love reading back through our posts and reminiscing about where we’ve been, what we did and who we met.Julie at the kitchen table of our apartment in Malta on a blogging day – leaflets, guidebooks and plenty of coffee at the ready

If you’re on a budget, keep track of your expenses. Every day. We use a notebook to jot things down during the day and then enter it into a spreadsheet each evening. It doesn’t take long but it gives us a sense of whether or not we’re on track before things get out of control.Market in Siracusa, Sicily. It’s especially important to keep a note of spending in markets where lots of purchases and few receipts are the order of the day.

Not having a postal address isn’t easy, banks don’t like it for a start. Many thanks to our parents for being our post offices.Us sending postcards from the roof of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City!

Kit is important but it’s not at all important to have everything new. My 12 year old rucksack has functioned perfectly well and while I have occasionally been envious of the front opening zip panel on Andrew’s it is only slightly more effort to unpack.In borrowed salopettes and ski jackets in Switzerland (thanks Heidi and Olivier for letting us raid your wardrobe!)

It’s very easy to be lazy if you speak English. There’s no need to be afraid to travel because you don’t speak the language. It’s nice to learn a few words of the local language – hello, thank you and numbers should be at the top of your list – but it’s quite possible to get by with a combination of English and tourist charades. Remember, if you want to eat or buy something, the vendor wants to sell you something – you both want it to work.Different kinds of baguettes in a French bakery. We were surprised how quickly the French we learned in school came back to us.

Know that on arrival in a new country you will reflexively say thank you in the previous country’s language for several days while you reprogram yourself. It is shocking how quickly we forgot even the few basic phrases we learned.

The more we travel, the longer the list of places we’d like to visit gets!Cathedral spires on Luxembourg City’s cathedral. A late addition to our list of stops.

We’ve become very confident when crossing the street. In many countries pedestrians do not automatically have right of way, even on a zebra crossing with a green man. Checking the opposite direction is a good idea too as motorbikes and bicycles generally ignore even the scant road rules.Crossing the road in Amsterdam requires you to be aware of bicycles and silent electric trams as well as cars

Adopt a football team. When we told people that we were from Newcastle we often got a response of “Newcastle United – Alan Shearer!”Asterix and friends chasing after a mouse, not a football, on a comic strip wall in Brussels

On the platform at St Pancras station in London. We’re home – old and wiser perhaps, but not looking too different to the day we departed.

It is getting increasingly easier to travel, the wealth of information from bloggers like us has made researching and travel planning a quick search away. Timetables and bus routes are generally easy to find for all but the least touristed destinations, and translation apps are arguably taking the fun out of ordering meals in restaurants – though you still have the choice to use them, and we never did!

Both our iPad Minis have been invaluable in preparing, planning and travelling around Europe and Asia for two years

Here follows a few mobile apps, websites and resources that we’ve used during our trip – are there any you’d add? Let us know in the comments!

Kayak – Getting there

We tried to travel overland as much as possible, but on the few occasions we needed to fly we consulted Kayak. It’s our favourite app (and website) for finding destinations and checking routes because it shows lay-over times clearly and has easy filtering for the number of connections.

Rome2rio – Getting there and getting about

Do any kind of search of the format “how do I get from Place A to Place B” and Rome2rio will rightfully be in the top results. It quickly became invaluable to us in planning our movement around Europe and Asia on our two year trip. It shows trains, busses, ferries, and flights on an interactive map and it’s an excellent starting point for finding out possible routes and rough pricing.

Bla Bla Car – Getting about with the locals

A late entry to us but an easy recommendation that we’ll be using after our trip is BlaBlaCar – a car and journey sharing website! Introduced to us in its French language version – Covoiturage.fr – it was especially handy in Europe as some of the train journeys would have really eaten into our budget, plus we got to meet new people!

Accommodation – Finding somewhere to stay

Throughout our two year trip we’ve generally booked our accommodation about 2 weeks in advance, except for major capital cities and well, pretty much everywhere in Japan where we had to start booking about a month in advance to get the best deals.

For longer stays we prefer to rent private apartments or stay in apartment hotels so we can shop at the local markets and cook for ourselves. We’ve used a combination of fellow traveller recommendations, other travel blogs and accommodation booking websites, and our favourites (in order) are these:

AirBnB – Our favourite for booking homes and rooms around the world. We’ve had some truly amazing hospitality when staying with families through AirBnB, and its often been cheaper than hotels or hostels! We tend to seek out the new hosts – those recently registered, with few if any reviews but good descriptions and photos.

Booking.com – The first app or website we checked when looking for shorter stays.

HostelWorld.com – Great when we started out, but over the two years we’ve been away the prices, especially in Europe, have rocketed up. It tenuously maintains a place on our list as a resource of last resort as I can’t remember the last time we actually made a booking through it. Oh, and there isn’t a secure way to log in to the website.

9flats.com – AirBnB-like rival that we’ve used occasionally when we haven’t found anything on AirBnB.

No CouchSurfing on our list? We did stay with friends 5 times on our trip which would qualify as CouchSurfing experiences, but we arranged them with people we met on the road as we went, or who we already knew.

Maps.me – On the ground

We’d usually pick up a map from the hostel, hotel or local Tourist Information office as they’re quicker to consult and easier to carry, and in some poorer Asian countries we didn’t want to be flashing expensive electronics around. However, there were a few times in some of the smaller towns when it was difficult to ask directions where Maps.me proved invaluable. Note that you need to download the maps for the country or region in advance, and they’re often a few hundred MB so remember to save the remoter destinations before you depart!

XE Currency Exchange Rates – Knowing what stuff costs

Forecast.io – Planning around the weather

Once we had our list of sights to see, activities to experience and restaurants or cafes to visit we’d have a quick check of the weather forecast. Oftentimes we only had a few days in a place, or other constraints like opening times or museum closed days would dictate the order of our travel itinerary more than the weather, but when we had flexibility we’d plan the outdoor things for the better days. We’d often do the outdoor activities sooner if we knew the weather was going to be good.

Picking up the lingo

We always try to learn a few words of the native language and it really helped build rapport when ticket sellers, market vendors, shopkeepers and waitresses heard us making an effort. Not everyone speaks English and nor should they!
This involved a quick online search for the common phrases before we arrived, such as “Hello”, “Please”, “Thank You”, “Sorry” and the first few numbers. If we were staying longer we’d make more of an effort to learn the most common questions and our answers. We’d occasionally use Google Translate but it was often easier (and more fun) to watch people decipher their language written by us or to draw pictures in a little note book.

TripAdvisor – What to do when you get there

We took it in turns to do the majority of the planning each month, an idea we got about sharing the workload from a post by travel bloggers Warren and Betsy. Guidebooks and longer-form travel articles form the starting point, but then we’d do typical “Top 10 in X” searches and cross-reference with TripAdvisor to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. With the latter we found it’s important to read the most recent reviews as often the bad reviews complain about things that either aren’t relevant or don’t bother us – don’t just use the star rating! Good reviews often contain tips for visiting, e.g. best time to visit, how to skip the queue or join a free tour.

In no particular order, here’s a list of travel blogs we follow for inspiration or consulted often..

Married with Luggage – Warren and Betsy have created a great archive of travel writing, though more recently they’re about helping others find the good life through travel and the “how” rather than the “where”.

Uncornered Market – Daniel and Audrey have put out a wealth of information and inspiration that convinced us to visit Central Asia. They’ve covered most of the planet and remind us to be more adventurous!

Amateur Traveler Podcast – Chris Christensen interviews people about the their recent travels. His entire back catalogue is available and we’d often listen on trains, busses or over dinner to tales about the next country or city on our itinerary. See if you can spot the names of guests from the links above!

While we’re researching, we make notes of places that interest us as we find them on paper, in Trello or in spreadsheets, which we then go back through to look into further: reviews, how to get there, opening times, etc

Dropbox – Documents backup and photo sharing

We planned for the worst – lost or stolen baggage, technology, and travel documents – and we kept photocopies of passports, passport photos, visas and insurance documents in Dropbox. It’s also great for sharing photos with fellow travellers when we were in places without internet access as we could swap email addresses and upload and share them via a shared folder later. If you sign up with this affiliate link we’ll each get an extra 500MB of space!

WiFi Photo Transfer – Simple, local photo sharing

We’ve often wanted to transfer photos between our iPad minis, onto the laptop, or with other travellers we’ve spent the day sightseeing with. This amazing free app is really handy for transferring larger numbers of files, but its killer feature? It shows photos in albums by default so we could quickly organise then transfer just the photos we wanted!

Skype – Keeping in touch

We kept this blog for two reasons: we wanted to write about our adventures as a reminder for ourselves, and to let our friends and family back home know what we’ve been up to. In addition we’d always send our families an email or text message with our travel plans such as flight numbers, accommodation etc, but there’s no substitute to actually seeing and hearing those we missed most. I talked to my Mum about this and we agreed that just the first few seconds of a Skype call are enough to reassure us that they’re alive, well, and enjoying themselves – and that goes both ways! Our Christmas presents to both sets of parents before we left was setting up their computers with webcams and a quick Skype training session :o)

Rain, Rain – Help getting to sleep

The soothing sound of rain on all manner of surfaces helped us get to sleep by blocking out the noise of other travellers on trains or in hostel dormitories. My favourite sound is the rain on a tent, but Julie preferred listening to podcasts (which she’d then have to listen to again as she’d often missed the endings!)

Letterpress – a very clever word game that Julie usually wins because she plays strategically whereas I try for impressively long words. This one needs internet access.

Clash of Clans – Saw this advertised everywhere in South Korea and became addicted. I now lead a clan named after Penny Arcades D&D exploits – Acquisition Inc (#RG98U9P) – and we’re recruiting! This one also needs internet access.. :o)